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A man thinks he is dying for his country, said Anatole France, but he is dying for a few industrialists. But even that is saying too much. What one dies for is not even so substantial and tangible as an industrialist.

Simone Weil

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Simone Weil
Age: 34 †
Born: 1909
Born: February 3
Died: 1943
Died: August 24
Autobiographer
Diarist
French Resistance Fighter
Philosopher
Poet
Teacher
Trade Unionist
Translator
Writer
Paris
France
Simone Adolphine Weil
Dying
Saying
Dies
Industrialist
Country
Industrialists
Even
Substantial
Much
Tangible
Men
France
Thinking
Thinks

More quotes by Simone Weil

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The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.
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Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad , the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.
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In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself - only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.
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A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
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Academic work is one of those fields which contain a pearl so precious that it is worth while to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it.
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Uprooting is by far the most dangerous of the ills of human society, for it perpetuates itself.
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Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love andjustice.
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When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: It is the trade entering his body. Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.
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We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits - and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.
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Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. . . . When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.
Simone Weil
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The right to kill: supposing the life of X ... were linked with our own so that the two deaths had to be simultaneous, should we still wish him to die? If with our whole body and soul we desire life and if nevertheless without lying, we can reply 'yes'> then we have the right to kill.
Simone Weil
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Imaginary evil is romantic and varied real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
Simone Weil
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The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the transcendental correlation of contradictories.
Simone Weil
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The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.
Simone Weil
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One might lay down as a postulate: All conceptions of God which are incompatible with a movement of pure charity are false. All other conceptions of him, in varying degree, are true.
Simone Weil
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Distance is the soul of beauty.
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It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.
Simone Weil
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Truth is one, but error is manifold.
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Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.
Simone Weil
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You could not be born at a better period than the present, when we have lost everything.
Simone Weil